FAITH

2009 - 2021

Materials: Neon-light and Acrylic. 1200x340x210mm. Collection of the Artist.

Photograph digital print. Pigment inks printed on 310gsm Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl paper. Collection of the Artist.

‘Faith’, a neon obelisk sculpture, considers the future function of historical hope and conviction. The crassness of commercialism and monumental solidity is combined with a blue cobalt glow of text, a colour that has associations with past religious iconography. The use of text is prevalent in Asdollah-Zadeh’s practice. Its form is concurrently intimate and uniform – a testament to late modernity. Faith is an open and discursive enquiry – a statement and question at once. Faith, the un-wavering confidence in a person or idea, could be argued to be the cause of much human contention throughout the world’s history. However, faith and its connection to community, is also where purpose of life can be found as a means to overcome absurdity and fear in a post-modern era devoid of solid foundations. In opposition to his work Fear Performance: The Myth of Sisyphus, Asdollah-Zadeh looks to faith and hope, in their divergent forms, in the manner of Søren Kierkegaard’s ‘leap of faith’ at the face of existentialism.*

*Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus. pp 35.

Excerpt taken from the essay by Zara Sigglekow. Published by Papakura Art Gallery for the exhibition FEAR, FAITH AND PERSIAN POP, 2013. Curated by Tracey Williams.